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chipperdog writes "NorthPine.com reports: 'ASCAP is firing back against Pandora Radio's attempt to get lower music royalty rates by buying a terrestrial radio station, "Hits 102.7" (KXMZ Box Elder-Rapid City). In a petition to deny, ASCAP alleges "Pandora has failed to fully disclose its ownership, and to adequately demonstrate that it complies with the Commission's foreign ownership rules." ASCAP also alleges that Pandora has no intention of operating KXMZ to serve the public interest, but is rather only interested in obtaining lower royalty rates. Pandora reached a deal to buy KXMZ from Connoisseur Media for $600,000 earlier this year and is already running the station through a local marketing agreement.'"

it's a very, very high bar for rico/racketeering. Proof of malice or something, if I recall? IANAL (lawyers, correct me?) While that's easily and clearly what ASCAP is doing to the average individual, the likeliness of success in court proving it is basically zero. They get to parade around with this shit saying how they protect "artist's interests" even when artists disagree and/or it's to the artist's own detriment.

You think the songwriters actually get more than a pittance from ASCAP?

Collectively? Yes.

But only the top tier artists are going to see a significant payout.

In 2012, ASCAP collected over US$941 million in licensing fees and distributed $828.7 million in royalties to its members, with an 11.6 percent operating expense ratio. As of July 2013, ASCAP membership included over 460,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers.

If you thought LMFAO and Bruno Mars were ubiquitous in this country, good luck trying to avoid them overseas. Songs from both artists, already massive hits at home, were huge earners outside the United States last year.Of the top 10 earning songs of the year for ASCAP members, four were recorded by Bruno Mars. Although LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" scored the most revenue internationally, Bruno Mars swept the next three spots.In 2012, the organization's foreign revenue topped 340 million, more than double its 2000 foreign revenue of 128 million. As that revenue has grown, it has also increased its share of ASCAP's total. Foreign share of ASCAP revenue was 36% last year, compared with 22% in 2000.In all, ASCAP takes in about six times what it pays out to performance rights organizations in other countries.ASCAP collects royalties from performances in foreign countries through its agreements with fellow rights organizations in those territories. It currently collects from 100 such groups, recently adding Uganda.ASCAP's largest affiliate partner is Britain, from which it receives about 50 million a year for American songs

Nothing more parasitic than a songwriter getting paid for the public performance of their work... shame on those people... shame.

With how much our culture and technology has been retarded in the name of preserving archaic quasi-governmental licensing systems...

I shed the same tears for the newspapers who lose revenue when jurisdictions no longer require legal notices to be posted in the classifieds. Won't you consider the jobs of the fax machine manufacturers? If signatures can be electronically signed, what will happen to the market for specialized devices designed to print images received over outdated phone lines?

Except that to earn a living then they would have to write a new song every day. Copyrights makes sense on a much more limited basis. An artist could literally spend years working on something without any benefit. It is not unreasonable to expect some term that allows them to benefit exclusively for their work. Otherwise there would be no incentive to create in the first place.

The problem is that the laws have changed to the point where it is almost infinite thanks to the lobbying of the big entertainment companies.

You have little sympathy for artists so I assume you don't read books or listen to music.

I stand corrected; artists should be able to create once and then sit back, relax and draw a never-ending stream of compensation without ever having to create again. Wait, what's that you say? You're not advocating something that extreme? Well, then, what the fuck do you call THIS [wikipedia.org] horseshit??

It is not unreasonable to expect some term that allows them to benefit exclusively for their work. Otherwise there would be no incentive to create in the first place.

This is exactly right. In fact, there was no music, or singing, or recordings, or concerts of any sort before copyright was instituted and ASCAP was founded to protect the artist and give him the brand new incentive to create.

I suspect "often" is not accurate in this case, but it's irrelevant. Copyright law doesn't encourage the artistically inclined to create. It encourages some people to try and make a living at creating. I don't have any problem with that. I just disagree with the basic premise that absent copyright there'd be no incentive to create, because IMO it's obviously false on its face.

In the time before, I imagine very few people made a decent living just by writing songs. They had to perform them pretty regularly i

The problem is you aren't comparing apples to apples. Copying things even just 100 years ago was very difficult and time-consuming. If a wandering minstrel overheard a song from another minstrel then he could copy it and perform it but not on a massive scale. The equivalent today is if 5 minutes after a minstrel performed a new song that every minstrel in the world could perform it an infinite number of times.

Your analogy is incorrect. Listening to a recording is not the same as seeing the original artist perform it, or no one would ever go to a concert. And listening to a song doesn't instantly give anyone the ability to duplicate it exactly in a live performance.

Also, copyright was around long before it was "easy" to copy or steal a musical recording.

Indeed, it's a very different world; but my point still stands. Lack of copyright didn't, doesn't, and wouldn't rid the world of creative endeavors. It would cert

in the case of those who DID make money off works they created, it was also not uncommon for them to find people who copied them, or performed them without permission, and beat them with sticks until they agreed to not do it again.

It is not unreasonable to expect some term that allows them to benefit exclusively for their work. Otherwise there would be no incentive to create in the first place.

Well, authors got no such thing until copyright was invented in the wary 18th century, and even then it took quite some time (with a helping hand from colonialism) for it to become widespread. But new works were still created, from antiquity on.

Copyright is an incentive to create a work, but it is not the only one, and it is not always even the most important one.

And copying in the 18th century was an involved process. It wasn't something easily done. Copyright laws followed soon after the printing press for a reason. Before then making a copy probably took longer than actually writing the book in the first place. Not to mention that the literacy rate was ridiculous low.

And copying in the 18th century was an involved process. It wasn't something easily done.

Pirates have never enjoyed a technological advantage over legitimate publishers. There is no technology that pirates can use which publishers can't (though some may be stubborn or stupid enough that they won't), and publishers also have the advantage of generally being able to work openly, while pirates often (though not always) have to be more surreptitious or at the very least lack some of the advantages of legitimate publishers like early access to the MS and the imprimatur of the author for marketing.

I would say that probably only 1% of artists live a life even close to "easy". Go into Barnes and Noble and look at all the books in there. Stay away from the Stephen Kings and John Grishams but look at the thousands of other authors who may be much better authors but just don't get the right publicity or who can't afford to write full time.

There is a reason they say "starving artist" and not "starving accountant".

I am not saying that every author needs to live like them. But they do need to live.

And those top grossing authors all have one thing in common - they put out bestsellers nearly every year. And for many of them they have multiple movie deals. They most likely spend more hours actually working than most 9-5ers.

you're equating the concept with a garuntee of success.its not.its a protection of the possibility of success.

copyright does not beget success, but simply makes it possible by allowing one to profit from one's own work, without the interference of others, ie, by ripping it off and selling it themselves. the individual citizen has a clear and vested interest served by this protection from the idea that any of us could potentially be that creator.

I am not saying that every author needs to live like them. But they do need to live.

sure. just that society should not guarantee them income. go do something else...excessive ownership and milking of ideas (which are based off other ideas) is not helping either (that being said, i'd be ok with limited copyright. i don't know... 5 years ? 10 years ?)

Society doesn't guarantee them income. Not sure where you got that idea. Society just says that for a certain period they should be the only people who DO benefit off their work. Copyright is mainly there so that somebody else can't profit off of my work. If my work sucks, though, I am not going to make enough to live. Nothing changes that.

i was mostly catching on the phrase "But they do need to live". currently we are making and enforcing really insane limits (both time and scope) that are actually damaging to the society as a whole, just because a couple of professions "need to live".we do not offer the same level of insane protection to recipes or dress designs. it would be great to break up cartels that control culture, but they have grown too powerful...

these laws make nearly everybody a criminal. who has not downloaded at least one song

they dont have it any easier, and copywright is not inehrently evil (though it seems to me you take the view they are).

in fact its quite a bit harder. you're probably like me, and work a normal day to day hourly wage job. we work, we get paid. its simple, easy, and garutneed. its very low risk, very low reward, but we make it up on volume of hours worked.

for the sake of discussion, ignoring the MAFIAA and how they have perferted the industry.........a music (or any other kind) artist by contrast is not normal day to day work. it is a high risk, high reward situation. the starving artist stereotype is true because that reflects the condition of the majority of "artists": people who have not been and will never be successful.at it. and most artists DO work continuously. so here we have people who work continuously, trying to be successful, trying to get something creative created AND sold to the public, AND get paid for it. a lot of time and effort with a extremely high chance of NOT succeeding. yet people still do it anyway....because its still a high reward comensurate with the high risk.

if you eliminate completely any protections or garuntees of that works profitability (ie, copywright) the reward drops significantly. the creator of a work does have an right to profit from it, for a -reasonable- period of time. this concept of a limited copywright serves both the personal need of the artist to get a reason reward for his creative effort if he is successful, and the public's cultural interest in having works not perpetually owned and locked down.

but that is the key point: the reasonable period of time. very few people take the stance that copywright is inherently evil, and most agree that a limited duration protection incentivizes artists and protects them, while still encouraging them to continue to produce, and serving the public interest. given that, the rest of negotiation of the meaning of "reasonable". and that is precisely where the MAFIAA comes in, and where they have perverted this topic (another perversionis the enslavement of artists, and using hollywood accounting to prevent having to pay them...but that's another topic). Clearly to most of us this perpetual lockdown that they have managed to bring about is UN-reasonable.

but equally unreasonable is the complete abolishment of copyright.Turn the clock back to a reasonable duration.

I never argued against having copyrights, as much as the idea appeals to me.

I take the view that copyright is evil, but a necessary one in extremely limited doses for the purposes of encouraging the creation of a rich public domain. And yes, that means the artists necessarily need to make their money while they can from it, as they will (largely) live to see their copyrights expire, and in not all that many years in the grand scheme of things. Which does, effectively, necessitate that the artist continue

if you eliminate completely any protections or garuntees of that works profitability (ie, copywright) the reward drops significantly. the creator of a work does have an right to profit from it, for a -reasonable- period of time. this concept of a limited copywright serves both the personal need of the artist to get a reason reward for his creative effort if he is successful, and the public's cultural interest in having works not perpetually owned and locked down....

but equally unreasonable is the complete abolishment of copyright.Turn the clock back to a reasonable duration.

I agree (provided that you mean that authors' right to try to profit is granted by the public for public purposes) but with one caveat: copyright exists to serve the public interest (specifically the public interest in having the greatest possible public domain) and should be fine-tuned so as to not merely fulfill that interest one way or another, but to do to the greatest extent possible. If, and only if, abolishing copyright would result in this public purpose being advanced more than in any other way, it

Well I think some reasonable analysis needs to be done to figure out what is fair compensation. For example:

Let's say author A spends 3 years writing a novel while his wife supports him. In those 3 years, a college educated individual could have earned say $300K (just picking round numbers). Then let's assume that an average novel produces $30K per year in royalties for its author. That means he would need 10 years to break even. Now if his novel is a huge success he's likely to make back far more tha

You do not have to run numbers.
Cut it to 15 years.
If the people stop creating music and literature and movies then we can raise it.
If they continue on or even start producing more we can try 10 years.
The market will tell us exactly where copyright needs to be.

I think it's more complicated than that, though. It could take years to see a shift in production and even then measuring it would be incredibly difficult. Even if people start producing more would you really want to cut the term? I don't think there is such a thing as too much creative production.

I think it's more complicated than that, though. It could take years to see a shift in production and even then measuring it would be incredibly difficult. Even if people start producing more would you really want to cut the term? I don't think there is such a thing as too much creative production.

The creation and publication of more original works is only one of the goals of copyright, but it is neither the only one nor the most important one. Copyright also seeks to enlarge the public domain as rapidly and as fully as possible. Beyond some optimal point, we get into a situation of diminishing returns. And if copyright gets too long and too onerous, it can actually be worse for society than not having it at all.

I don't think there can be too many works created and published either, but some works do

If you read any of my posts you would see that I think it is ridiculous that copyrights extend past death or even close to what they are now.

I will say one thing, though. I don't think copyright should end with the death of the artist if it is still within the regular term. So let's say an artist writes a great novel after years of his wife supporting him and dies the next day. I think it is reasonable that his wife receive the benefit of his work.

I think that it is reasonable for copyright terms to last for a set period of time, and for there to be a set number of renewal terms available (if sought), and for copyrights to be transferred as if they were ordinary property of a decedent's estate.

But beware of the infamous widows and orphans argument. The value of a copyright is a total crapshoot. Most are worthless. Of the few with any economic value, most of them will see most of that value realized very shortly after publication in a given medium.

You misunderstand, the term doesn't guarantee that they'll make back their money. Most authors wouldn't even come close. It's just a reasonable term that on average would allow somebody to have enough time to make back about the same amount of money. Some artists will make far more and some will make nothing. The market will still determine that.

And why is it any more unreasonable to think that an artist make a living doing art than an accounting doing accounting?

Well I think art is definitely more of a gamble. The risk is greater and therefore the reward should be greater. Without copyrights, of a reasonable term as I've said, they would potentially not benefit at all. Then why take the risk?

No. There is a simple mathematical way. To register a copyrighted work should cost a dollar in the first year. Every man and their dog can register that. It costs double that on year 2. After 10 years it's costing you $1000 ish to own the copyright. So you had better be making more than that for it to be worthwhile. After 15 Years, it's costing you bucket loads.

You can keep paying for the long tail, but now it becomes a business decision over whether you keep a copyright or not. Disney can keep Stea

Some people make a living just by writing songs. A lot of famous singers do not write their own songs. Both skills don't always go hand-in-hand except for the most talented people. That's why there are writer's royalties and performance royalties - both are separate for a good reason.

If an artist worked for a company that paid him a fixed hourly/annual wage for the work he does - whether he completes anything or not - then I am sure he would be fine with not getting paid when his work is viewed.

There aren't many companies that pay artists that way, though. Not to mention that the artist would then be stuck producing only what the company wants which leads to the crap Hollywood produces.

If you don't have a compensation model for artists outside of corporations then you aren't going to g

People can't feed themselves off of love for what they do. You don't just write a book overnight and feed yourself the next day. You can go years struggling, working odd jobs just to eat, living in poverty, just for the chance that your book will get noticed and receive financial success. The people who can do these truly do love what they do and are willing to make that sacrifice. But even they would have to think twice if at the end they didn't get paid.

No one is saying they have to be compensated but if their work is great than they SHOULD be compensated. Without that then there is no incentive to create amazing art. Have you never read a book or listened to music in your life? Do you have no appreciation for creative works and the effort that goes into them?

its not about a right to be successful. no one anywhere is demanding that.its about "i cant legally record someone else, and sell their 'product' for profit".without copyright a creator of a work is at the mercy of a bigger fish who can imitate or outright steal his creation and profit from it, while giving him nothing. its the same as theft of a craftsmans work to sell to a fence, only of an intangible "good". that is the biggest thing copyright protects for an artist.

You know, where musicians actually make money as opposed to record deals which usually land the artists deeply in debt when they don't pan out?

This isn't necessarily the case, especially for self-published artists. For instance, Zoe Keating has published her revenue breakdown [tumblr.com] -- only 26% comes from touring. And that's revenue, not profit, and touring is expensive.

Her situation is unique as she is independent (so no label to take profits) and yet reasonably successful. However, the aggregate information base

Nothing more parasitic than a songwriter getting paid for the public performance of their work... shame on those people... shame.

That's not the issue - the issue is that they should get the same payment regardless of the broadcast medium. Why should an artist get more (or less) money when I listen to their work over an EM transmission through the air as opposed to through a cable? This makes as much sense as basing the royalty rate on the transmission frequency of the radio station.

Because it's not the artist that's getting the royalty most of the time.First we eliminate the MAFIAA middleman...and then there is no secondly because that would go a long way to fixing the situation.

Imagine...

In a world with no MAFIAA to contrive to make the ARtist owe them, such that they never need to get paid...

And no MAFIAA to lobby to change/extend the copyrights...And no MAFIAA to demand and lobby for ridiculous royalties owed them that the Artists will never see...And Artists with a reasonable copy

And yet people still listen to the crap when there are plenty of easy alternatives - including podcasts & personal music collections. I really don't get it. Sports and other live events are the only decent reasons to turn on the radio.

I really cringe at how often music is repeated on a music radio station, it's the same 20 songs repeated every hour or something like that.

That's what I like about BobFM and JackFM. Or, did. The Bob station that I listened to on the way to work was bought by someone who thought that Texarkana needed yet another country station. But - no matter the genre, if they can't avoid repeating the same song more than once a day, the station is a FAILURE!!

Oh, they just wanted to double dip on ringtones. Want to record and sell a whole 3 minute song? That'll be 9.6c per track. Want to clip and distribute a 10 second clip of that song as a ringtone? That's 25c. Written into law. They just wanted to get paid a second time for when some asshole's phone rings with a clip of a song you didn't want to hear anyway.

...to pay a pittance in royalties, and nothing-nada-zilch to the recording artists, but they get all bent out of shape when you do it over this newfangled "internet" thing, even if it's basically the same (Hit 90s Pop on Pandora sounds like every other Clear Channel station out there).

ASCAP is just looking to make sure they don't lose all that money they spent lobbying to get much higher rates for internet streaming than for airwave streaming.

the difference is that ASCAP gets a lot more per 'play' from radio stations than they get from streaming sites like Pandora which just isn't fair. Just because a 'play' on terrestrial radio could be head by half the population of Chicago and a streaming 'play' is usually heard by a single person should not be a reason that they shouldn't be paying the same per-play rates right?

the difference is that ASCAP gets a lot more per 'play' from radio stations than they get from streaming sites like Pandora which just isn't fair. Just because a 'play' on terrestrial radio could be head by half the population of Chicago and a streaming 'play' is usually heard by a single person should not be a reason that they shouldn't be paying the same per-play rates right?

If it makes you feel any better about it, no radio "play" will ever be heard by me - the only new music I hear is from Pandora or Spotify (while comutting, I either stream Pandora or a podcast from my phone to my bluetooth enabled car stereo). And I suspect that increasingly, fewer and fewer of the listeners that advertisers care about will be listening to over the air radio.

You basically can't do anything in this country without stumbling into the web weaved by some bullshit lobbying group. I'm not a big Ayn Rand fan, but we really are a society of producers and moochers.

"ASCAP also alleges that Pandora has no intention of operating KXMZ to serve the public interest, but is rather only interested in obtaining lower royalty rates"

Even if true (and I actually have little doubt that it is), does it even matter? If owning and operating a radio station gives them lower royalty rates, as long as they are actually carry out operating such a station, what difference does their incentive make?

When you use the public airwaves, you have to follow the government's rules. Always part of those rules is your service fulfilling some form of public interest. With TV, this means a certain number of hours of children programming, regular news programming, and some emergency news and emergency alert capabilities.

If you don't like the rules, you don't get to use the radio spectrum for free, and can purchase some spectrum from the FCC yourself, at very high rates like the cell phone companies do, and then you can broadcast, to whoever has your proprietary receiver, whatever you want...

Clear Channel got in trouble a while back because their highly automated operations meant no-one was around to answer the phone at a local radio station, so they didn't broadcast the alert the local police wanted to get out to the public, until many hours later. That's the kind of thing that gets broadcasters shut down. That's the kind of thing ASCAP is accusing Pandora *will* do in the future.

If Pandora does a good job running the radio station, more power to them. But they DO have many obligations to the public that they need to fulfill to be licensed by the FCC.

Still, 'in the public interest' is pretty watered down as a legal term in the U.S. Supposedly, all corporate charters are required to be 'in the public interest' as well.

Does ASCAP mean that they have some substantial reason to believe Pandora will not correctly handle emergency alerts?

Other than a few very specific FCC rules, 'in the public interest' is essentially a meaningless phrase these days. I'm fairly sure that even a large man farting out (literally) classic tuba tunes 24/7 could manage to make the

The claim seems to hinge upon the assertion by ASCAP that if Pandora is able to acquire a brick-and-mortar airwave radio station, it will cause "significant economic harm on ASCAP." The fundamental flaw with that argument is that ASCAP is not entitled to have a bad business model protected by the laws or courts. Nor is ASCAP entitled to block anybody from making moves that give them an improved position from which to bargain.

The best comparison I can think of comes from the airline business.

This reminds me of American Airlines trying to sue Southwest out of Love Field in the early 1970s with claims that allowing Southwest to operate out of Love would hurt the newly-opened DFW International Airport (indeed, trying to force Southwest into the agreement between all the other airlines of the day to abandon Love and move to DFW, Southwest's service not having existed when the agreement was forged), and the much more recent United opposing Southwest's plans to go international from Houston Hobby on the grounds that it would adversely affect United's bottom line. Thankfully, the latter was basically shot down by the City of Houston, but the American Airlines fight against Southwest's operation at Love raged on for decades, with Congress getting involved more than once.

Of all the people with their hands out, making money from music, the performers and writers are the ones creating the content and getting the shaft when it comes to getting paid for their work.
Pandora and other streaming services are doing nothing except preserving this status quo.

ASCAP doesn't give a rat's ass about the performers - those are just monkeys making sounds. They're concerned about the big-hit, blockbuster songwriters almost exclusively. I say big-hit songwriters and not all songwriters because the pay scale for royalties is unfairly skewed to only those on the top of the radio playlists.

In a "perfect" world, everybody would get paid per play (or not at all, depending on your point of view), not based on a formula made up by the biggest names to only work in their favor.

Perform exclusively your own original songs in your own venue (say a pub) and ASCAP will still come knocking demanding payment. If you protest that it's your own material, they'll invite you to pay them an annual fee to collect your portion of the royalties they will collect from you on your behalf minus 'administrative costs'.or don't pay the fee and they'll just give the royalties to Justin Bieber. Of course, since the royalties due to you (as they calculate) will be less than the annual fee for their ser

You must not have read that carefully. Why should I pay anyone for the right to perform my own original work in my own venue

I would suggest that they make sure they don't try to bill people who don't owe them anything and that they don't attempt to collect for someone who has not freely made them an agent for that purpose. It's the difference between a business and a racket.

Maybe Pandora will "give" the radio station the money to buy a Pandora.Pandora will of course have a long term licensing agreement with a new corp. Meta-Pandora and most of the money will get funnelled to Meta-Pandora.

Terrestrial radio is not required to pay musicians anything, and never has. Clear Channel has cut a deal to pay them something - no doubt very little, but just enough to keep them from lobbying to get legislation which would force CC to pay a fixed rate.

IIRC, internet radio pays something like 3-10x what terrestrial radio pays to the writers.

Terrestrial radio is required to pay musicians. It's copyrighted material and can't be broadcast without some sort of license agreement. This is usually brokered through an agency like ASCAP/BMI. Clear Channel may have a special agreement with one of those agencies, but they aren't the only ones required to pay.

If a small TV station airs a Ford commercial with copyrighted music in the background, they have to track how many times they air that commercial and pay royalties on that song. It's no different

I will add that some record labels will pay a radio station to air their music. And theoretically they could give them a free pass to air it without a license. But the radio station STILL has to pay royalties on those songs, since their agreement with ASCAP/BMI/SESAC still requires it.

Its more complicated than that, from what I understand as a casual observer of the situation. Believe what I write at your own risk, this info is complied from bits of different stories covering the matter, and I may have forgotten parts, or not integrated it correctly together.

The terrestrial radio rates are higher, but they are paid out to less artists. They pay based on sampling a station during a time period, if an artists song was played, they get paid. If they were not played during the sampling time,